Alex Pereira ready to wrestle Magomed Ankalaev if needed in UFC 313 title defense

Don’t look now, but Alex Pereira is on the precipice of finishing one heck of a clean-up job.As chaotic as the UFC light heavyweight division had been 18 months ago — with injured champions twice dropping the belt and a pair of high-level 205-pounders fighting to a draw to leave a vacant belt unclaimed in the preceding year — Pereira is just a win away from victories over each of the top four contenders.Not that anyone’s making that a foregone conclusion ahead of Pereira’s UFC 313 title defense in the main event in Las Vegas, where at last he faces Magomed Ankalaev on Saturday night (10 p.m.ET, ESPN+ pay-per-view).Ankalaev long has been pegged by pundits and fans as the toughest potential test of Pereira’s dominance of the division, with his mix of striking prowess and, especially, grappling competence exceeding that of anyone else the former middleweight champion has faced in his brief but brilliant UFC career.To wit, when Pereira (12-2, 10 finishes) shared on social media a clip of him and coach Glover Teixeira — also a former holder of the light heavyweight belt — wrestling outdoors shirtless and shoeless in snow-coated Connecticut, Ankalaev’s reply: “I hope you ready to do this for 25 min.”“I think this is going to be a great experience,” Pereira told The Post through an interpreter, during a recent video call, regarding the test against Ankalaev.

“I can make his words my own as well.Let’s see if he can stand 25 minutes doing that.

If he can’t grapple me for 25 minutes, then he’s going to have to stand up, and then we all know how that’s going to go.”No telling for sure how that would go, but if Pereira’s history of violence as a two-division champion of Glory kickboxing and the elite MMA proving ground of the UFC … well, it won’t be pretty for the challenger from Dagestan, Russia.Pereira has yet to need 25 minutes in any of his six UFC championship fights over the last three years, but he’s been close twice, knock...